Recently, there is growing use of information, such as personal information, online bank transactions or the like, for which there is a strong requirement for improved confidentiality with regard to strangers or external parties, on an information processing apparatus such as a personal computer.
When information as described above is used, generally, a “password” dedicated for the use of the information is personally set, and then processes, such as browsing of a folder including the information on a recording medium or decoding of a file representing the information, can be performed only when collation with the password is obtained.
In the related art, an encoding or decoding process is independently performed for every file or folder. In this case, when performing the encoding or decoding process, password input corresponding to each process is required for each file or folder on a case-by-case basis.